Submission: Senate Economic References Committee Inquiry into Affordable Housing

The Tenants' Union of NSW has made a submission to the Senate Economic References Committee Inquiry into Affordable Housing.

This submission has two purposes. First, it reviews the current state and recent history of the housing market, with particular attention to the huge inflation in house prices over the past two decades; the causes of inflation in policy settings that encourage speculation; and the further effect of speculative inflation in the loss of affordable rental housing. At this point we consider briefly what can be done by governments to address affordability problems, and legal problems, in the wider rental sector.

Second, within the context of these wider problems of housing market policy, we consider the current state and recent history of the social housing system, with particular attention to the insufficient supply of social housing. This is the basic problem of the social housing system today, and from it flows so many of the system’s other problems. The only real solution to the shortfall is for governments to fund increased supply. Governments cannot administer or ration their way out of the shortfall; experience shows that attempts to do so can do little good, and may do considerable harm to individual persons and the system itself.